This post is Part 1 of 3. The following occurred in 2007 during my senior year at West Point. All names have been changed except my own.
Josh and I stepped onto a flat slab of cliff rock suspended 200 feet in the air. To our left, a wide stream of water raced over the edge and plummeted into the thundering pool below.
We had driven several hours to arrive the day before, and in the pre-dawn hours of darkness that morning had climbed a fence and traversed a footpath with our parachute gear. After arriving at the wide stream, we followed its current over brittle shale through a forested canyon until we heard the roar of the waterfall growing louder off the rocks around us. Turning a corner, we saw the stream vanish over the edge of a rock face, a wide valley spreading below with the sun rising behind it, casting an early morning glow off the surfaces of the cliffs.
“It’s like the garden of Eden…for us,” Josh said.
We went through our pre-jump ritual of donning our parachutes and inspecting one another’s equipment before S-folding our bridles in preparation for the jump. Josh went first, shuffling down the slanted rock face until he reached his stopping point at the edge. The footpath that wound through the canyon far below us and ended at the waterfall basin was empty for as far as we could see it. For a moment the only sound was the flow of water off the cliff to our left, and from beyond the edge, a distant rumble as it met the pool below.
“Five, four, three, two, one,” he counted and leapt, saying, “See ya” at the moment he pounced off the exit point.
He vanished from view past the edge. The sound of his canopy opening exploded in the valley, and I watched him soar under his parachute to splash down in the rippling pool below.
After watching him touching down safely, I gave a final check to my freefall setup with bridle S-folded, clutched in my right hand, and concealed by the fabric of the pilot chute draped over my fist. Then I carefully descended the rock slope to its edge before scanning the trail below for bystanders.
At a distant bend of the footpath several hundred meters from the water, a single figure now stood. He had appeared since Josh had landed and was now staring at me, two dogs waiting beside him.
Shit.
The sun was just beginning to rise, and we hadn’t expected any visitors to arrive for at least another 30 minutes. The landing area was too technical to jump in complete darkness, so we had timed our exit to occur after sunrise but before the park was open to the public.
I casually waved to him from the edge with my free hand. The second he didn’t wave back, I knew he was going to call the authorities.
Had he immediately and enthusiastically returned the gesture, I would have felt reasonably confident that he would be racing to high-five me after I landed: it always seemed to be one of those two responses with bystanders who happened to unexpectedly stumble across a BASE jump in progress.
The exit point was surrounded on all sides by higher cliffs, which concealed it from view unless someone was literally around the final bend in the trail before the waterfall. Since the forested slopes on either side of the trail rose to form those sheer cliffs, the footpath was the only way in or out once you reached the valley floor. In that moment I was less than a year from graduating West Point with both my body and career intact, no small achievement for someone who was illegally BASE jumping at every possible opportunity.
I directed my eyes to the horizon and took two measured breaths.
“Three, two, one, see ya.”
I jumped as far as I could from the edge, throwing my pilot chute straight up and with great force, and fell into the emptiness below.
My senses were abruptly consumed in the vortex of freefall, beginning with the frightful inhale of air that was the body’s natural reaction to a sudden fall from a fatal height. Every sense was overloaded with sensory input at an impossibly fast rate—the visuals of the rippling pool of water beneath storming up to eye level, the quaking rush of velocity swelling into a low howl, the rush of air whipping across the face, a shuddering roar of the earth rising to swallow me—and before my mind could fully process any aspect of the overwhelming transition into a straight drop, my canopy burst open with a loud crack and suspended me just above the surface of the water.
With an open parachute I was thrown back in control, and I instinctively yanked my right steering line into a hard turn towards the shore and then pulled down on both toggles to slow myself and flare for touching down. I splashed a soft, stand-up landing in shallow water.
The entire freefall lasted just over two and a half seconds, followed by five seconds under a parachute. Over half of that canopy time was flaring to land. I quickly turned and began pulling my canopy towards me over the surface of the water as Josh turned and raced back over the rocks towards the footpath.
By the time I had finished stuffing my parachute into my stash bag in order to transform into another hiker with a backpack, albeit one who was soaked from the waist down, Josh had returned and said our witness was running away so fast his dogs couldn’t keep up with him.
Devoid of any way out of the canyon besides a long hike to the trail entrance and then back up the steep winding road to my truck, we wouldn’t be able to outrun the response time of law enforcement. Our only chance was to hide in the most inaccessible place we could climb to and hope they’d eventually give up trying to find us.
We could then wait until the park filled with pedestrians, slipping in amongst a crowd of tourists on the footpath and walking out at the end of the day. Climbing as high as we could into the forest of an adjacent hillside before it turned into a sheer cliff, we hunkered down in the bushes.
It took the ensuing search party two hours of walking the hills until they found us.
“How’s it going?” I idly asked the first authority figure that crested the ridge and made eye contact with me.
“I GOT THEM!” he shouted over his shoulder.
Sheriff’s deputies, park rangers, and off-duty park employees who raced in for the effort swarmed and angrily took our stash bags from us. A deputy excitedly delivered a report over his radio, “We got them both.” There was a great sense of justice in the air.
We were immediately marched down the path to the trail entrance to the alarmed looks of legitimate park occupants: joggers, overweight tourists, parents with troops of small children, all craning their necks to see what kind of evil was being escorted by the authorities as order was restored to the quiet valley.
At the end of the trail, the squad cars awaited.
Continued in Arrest, Part 2: The Judge.
Jason Kasper is the author of the David Rivers Series. Read more and contact him at base1178.com.